United States in February 2026: the most important developments in economy
The dominant development in the United States economy in February 2026 was spending on artificial intelligence. On 27 February OpenAI secured a $110 billion funding round from Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, valuing it between $730 billion and $840 billion. Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation, AMD signed a chip deal with Meta reportedly worth tens of billions of dollars, and Amazon announced a rise of roughly 50 percent in capital spending. Nvidia reported record annual revenue of $216 billion, but its shares fell on concerns about its business in China. Technology stocks sold off repeatedly over fears about AI's disruptive effect. Late in the month the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic relax safeguards on its Claude model. The company said it could not agree, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using its technology, and OpenAI agreed to supply the Pentagon on a classified network.
Elon Musk merged SpaceX with his AI company xAI, creating a company valued at $1.25 trillion, and SpaceX hired banks to prepare a stock market listing.
Several executives left their posts amid reports of past ties to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Goldman Sachs's top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned on 13 February, Hyatt chairman Thomas Pritzker stepped down, and the head of LA28, Wasserman, put his talent agency up for sale. Bill Gates cancelled a speech at the India AI summit.
On trade, the administration announced deals with India, which lowered US tariffs on some Indian goods to 18 percent, and with Argentina and Bangladesh. After the Supreme Court struck down a major part of Trump's tariff policy, he announced a 10 percent global tariff on 20 February and said he would raise it to 15 percent; the 10 percent rate took effect on 24 February. The European Union paused implementation of its trade agreement with the United States. Oil prices climbed to a six-month high on US-Iran tensions, and on 28 February markets braced for volatility after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
by WorldBrief & Maksim Micheliov | AI-generated summary
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